Judge dismisses Trump bid to stop Pennsylvania vote certification
Donald Trump has been dealt a new setback in his effort to overturn the United States’s November 3 election results as a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by his campaign that sought to throw out millions of mail-in votes in the state of Pennsylvania.
US District Court Judge Matthew Brann ruled on Saturday that Trump’s campaign had failed to demonstrate there had been widespread voting fraud in the vote, which the incumbent president lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
“This Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations,” Brann wrote.
“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” the scathing opinion said. “Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.”
The lawsuit before Brann was filed on November 9 and had alleged inconsistent treatment by county election officials of mail-in ballots. Some counties notified voters that they could fix minor defects such as missing “secrecy envelopes” while others did not.
“This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together,” wrote Brann.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the seven Biden-majority counties that the campaign sued had argued Trump had previously raised similar claims and lost.
“There is no justification on any level for the radical disenfranchisement they seek,” Boockvar’s lawyers wrote in a brief filed on Thursday.
Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who spearheaded the lawsuit, said he was disappointed with the ruling.
“Today’s decision turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the US Supreme Court,” he said in a statement, adding that the Trump campaign will now ask the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to review the ruling on an accelerated timetable.
The Biden and Trump campaigns also did not immediately respond to queries.—Al Jazeera
A vibrant writer who gives a great insight on hot topics and issues
